CHAPTER 1: THE WAKING WITCH

By the time Codey Hall dragged the mop across the KFC floor for the third time, the smell of fry oil had sunk so deep into his clothes he doubted even holy fire could get it out. The lobby was empty. Chairs, flipped onto tables, gleamed dully in neon-red plastic under the fluorescent lights. Out by the highway in Strawberry Plains, taillights streaked past in slow, smeared lines of red. It was nearly midnight, the dead stretch between the dinner rush and the bar crowd. With any luck, there wouldn't be a bar crowd tonight.

Chuck, his manager, had disappeared into the back half an hour ago for "inventory"—which Codey knew meant sitting on an overturned pickle bucket, scrolling through his phone until corporate stopped paying him time and a half. The fryers sizzled low and lazy, idling as if tired themselves. Codey sloshed the mop into the gray water, wrung it out, and did another pass under the front windows. His shoulders ached. His feet hurt. His eyes burned from a mix of exhaustion, cheap cleaning chemicals, and the kind of fluorescent light that made everybody look like a corpse that hadn't been stored right.

"Living the dream," he muttered.

The speaker at the drive-thru crackled. He jolted, heart jumping into his throat. For a second, he saw nothing out there but his own reflection in the glass: tallish, skinny, dark curls smashed under his visor, the KFC polo hanging off his frame like it belonged to somebody bigger. His brown eyes looked too big in his pale face. Tired. Older than twenty-two. Then headlights swept across the lot, briefly turning the window into a mirror of pure white glare, and rolled past. No one pulled into the drive-thru lane. The speaker crackled again, then went quiet.

Codey frowned. The hum of the place sounded wrong. It took him a second to realize why. The fridge compressors were still doing their steady thrum. The fryer oil still whispered. But outside, the normal night sounds had dropped away. No crickets, no cicadas, no faint hiss of the interstate. Just a thick, held-breath silence pressing against the glass. His skin prickled. The hair on his arms stood up under the thin polyester sleeves.

He told himself it was nothing. Just tired. Just one more weird thing to stack on the rest of them. These included streetlights blowing out when he walked under them, his phone glitching if he got too worked up, and dreams that smelled of wet earth and wood smoke, always ending with him standing somewhere high and dark while something howled in the distance.

He shoved the mop back in the bucket, harder than necessary. "Yo, Chuck," he called toward the kitchen. "You almost done back there? I'm gonna start closing the lobby."

Silence. Then the soft thud of something hitting the prep table.

"Yeah, yeah," Chuck's voice floated around the corner. "Just do the chairs and registers. I'll count down the drawers when I'm done with the truck order."

"Cool." Codey bent, grabbed another chair, flipped it upside down on the table. The speaker crackled again.

"Welcome to K—" he started automatically, then stopped. No one was at the menu board. The lane was empty, just the black ribbon of asphalt curving around the building and the glow of the menu screen painting the dumpsters in soft, greasy light.

"Okay," he muttered. "That's not creepy at all."

Static hissed through the speaker—a low, breathy sound, like somebody exhaling right beside his ear.

Every muscle in his body went tight.

"Chuck?" Codey called. "Did you hit something on the headset?"

No answer.

The static rose, sharp and insistent, then cut off with a soft pop.

"Whatever," he said, louder than he needed to. "It's probably just—" He waved one hand in the air, unable to articulate a reason. "This place being old and busted."

He tried to shake it off. He still had to wipe the front counter, count the nugget sauces, check the bathrooms, and mop the back. Then he could clock out, get in his car, and make the twenty-five-minute drive back to Maynardville with the windows down, the radio up, and the night spread out like a dark quilt over the hills.

Home.

The word always felt a little shaky in his head. The rental on the edge of town wasn't much: a single-wide trailer that had seen better decades, the kind of place where the floor dipped in the hallway and the bathroom door didn't quite shut right. But it was his, technically. His name on the lease, his thrift-store couch, his stack of library books with the due dates always hovering one day away from being overdue.

He'd lived in worse. Foster homes with too many kids and not enough food. A couch in a friend-of-a-friend's place in Knoxville where the walls smelled like weed and cat pee, and the landlord came by at midnight to yell about the noise.

So yeah. The trailer was home enough.

He finished the last table and rolled the mop bucket toward the back. As he passed the windows, he glanced out again.

The parking lot sat under the sickly orange glow of the streetlights. Two cars: his beat-up '09 Corolla, blue if you squinted past the road dust, and Chuck's massive black Ram truck that he loved like a child. Beyond that, the four-lane highway, mostly empty this time of night. The mountains were a darker blue smear on the horizon, hunched under a sky that looked more purple than black.

Everything looked normal. Dead. Quiet.

The silence pressed hard against the glass.

He swallowed, throat suddenly dry.

"Stop it," he told himself under his breath. "You're being weird again."

He'd been weird his whole life. It was the running joke, the reason middle school kids called him Ghost Boy, the reason he was never invited to bonfire parties or lake days, even when he tried. Stuff happened around him. Lights flickered. TVs fuzzed. Once, when he was eleven and mad enough to shake, all the kitchen cabinet doors flew open at once while his foster mom screamed he was ungrateful, and the plates rattled as if about to leap out.

No one had believed him when he said he didn't touch them.

He didn't blame them. He barely believed himself.

The rest of the closing routine blurred. He wiped surfaces, stacked boxes, and checked the bathrooms (mercifully empty). The weird silence stayed, clinging to the edges of his awareness like cobwebs. Every time the ice machine dumped a load into the bin, he jumped.

By the time he finally clocked out, it was twelve twenty-seven.

"You good to lock up?" he asked, leaning in the doorway to the manager's office.

Chuck sat at the little metal desk, hunched over a stack of receipts and the glowing square of his phone. His greasy brown ponytail stuck out the back of his hat, and his belly strained against the buttons of his shirt.

"Yeah, yeah," Chuck said without looking up. "You take the deposit on your way, all right? I don't feel like swinging by the night drop."

Codey suppressed a sigh. "Sure."

Chuck finally glanced up, eyes bloodshot and small. "You're a good kid, Hall. I'll put in for you if corporate ever lets me hire more full-time."

"Thanks." He wasn't holding his breath. Full-time meant benefits. Benefits meant money. And money was a myth in his world, like unicorns and landlords who fixed things on time.

He tucked the deposit bag under his arm, grabbed his backpack from his locker, and stepped out into the night.

The air hit him like cool water.

It was one of those late-summer Tennessee nights where the heat never really broke, just softened, humidity thick as breath. The parking lot smelled like hot asphalt, old oil, and the faintest trace of fried chicken.

He stood there for a second, letting his eyes adjust and the door thud shut behind him.

The silence was worse out here.

No bugs, no cars on the highway, not even a distant dog barking in one of the trailer parks tucked behind the strip mall.

Just him, the lights, and the long, low shape of the mountains watching from far away.

He told himself that was stupid. Mountains didn't watch; they just sat there, big and indifferent, while people did whatever dumb stuff people did at their feet.

Something, somewhere high and out of sight, shifted.

He didn't hear it so much as feel it, a soft, distant thump in his chest, like a heartbeat that wasn't his.

Codey froze.

The security light above the back door flickered, once, twice, then steadied.

"Okay," he muttered under his breath. "Nope."

He crossed the lot faster than usual, sneakers scuffing asphalt. His Corolla, dulled by a thin film of road dust, sat beneath the light. He unlocked it, tossed his backpack onto the passenger seat, and slid in behind the wheel.

Inside, the car felt normal again. The faint scent of old fast-food bags mingled with the pine air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, punctuated by the rattle of coins in the cup holder.

He started the engine. The radio hummed low, a local country station murmuring heartbreak over gentle guitar. He turned it up a notch, just enough to fill the silence, not enough to stir the ghosts he felt coiled around the edges of his attention.

"Just drive home," he told himself. "Take the back way, like always. You'll be fine."

He pulled onto the highway, then onto the two-lane that would twist him up toward Maynardville.

Strawberry Plains receded, its lights giving way to stretches of dark trees and open fields. The road rolled and curved, its reflective white lanes flashing under his headlights. Here and there, a mailbox or the faint glow of a porch light marked homes tucked back from the road.

Codey relaxed by degrees. The farther he drove from the restaurant, the more the weird, tight feeling in his chest eased.

He liked this part of the night – the in-between hours when most people slept, and the world felt like just him, the road, and whatever distant things moved in the woods.

He rolled his window down a few inches. Warm air slid in, carrying the smell of grass and something faintly metallic, like rain yet to fall.

"Forecast didn't say anything about storms," he said to no one.

The deposit bag, a slight bulk under his thigh, reminded him to swing by the bank's night drop in Maynardville before heading home. The thought of pulling into the empty bank lot at one in the morning made his shoulders tighten, but it wouldn't be the first time.

"How's this my life?" he muttered, not really expecting an answer.

If his life had gone differently, maybe he'd be three years into a degree somewhere, half-buried in student loans and psych textbooks. Or apprenticing at a tattoo shop in Knoxville, drawing clean lines instead of chicken buckets. Or...something. Anything other than driving home from a night shift with grease under his nails and a constant knot between his shoulders.

A shape moved at the edge of his headlights.

He sucked in a sharp breath, hands tightening on the wheel.

It was just a deer, pale and delicate, frozen on the shoulder with its ears pricked. Its eyes flashed greenish-white in the beams, looking for a second too bright, like tiny twin moons. Then it bolted into the trees, gone.

His heart thumped.

"Dumbass," he told himself, exhaling. "You live in East Tennessee. There's deer. Congrats on noticing nature."

He passed the old church a few miles later. It hunched back from the road, white paint peeling, its steeple crooked against the sky. Someone had put up a new sign out front—JESUS SAVES in block black letters—but the cracked parking lot still sprouted weeds. He'd never seen more than three cars there, even on Sundays.

As his car rolled past, the radio cut out.

One second, twangy guitar and heartbreak; the next, dead silence, his engine loud in the suddenly empty space.

"Come on," he said, reaching to smack the console.

The headlights

flickered—just a hiccup, a fraction of a second, but long enough for his stomach to swoop and the hair to rise on the back of his neck.

Something pressed against his awareness, like a hand, flat and searching, running along the inside of his skull.

He gasped, breath catching.

As the road curved, his tire dipped off the edge onto the gravel shoulder with a crunch. He overcorrected, the wheel jerking, and the car swerved. His heart slammed against his ribs, adrenaline burning.

"Shit—shit—"

He got it back under control, breathing hard. The radio popped back on mid-song, as if nothing had happened.

He laughed, the sound too high and thin.

"Okay," he said, his voice shaking. "Okay, that was—"

The headlights blew out.

Darkness swallowed the road in a single, total gulp.

For one stunned heartbeat, he saw nothing. No lanes, no trees, no sky. Just black.

The engine died.

Silence boomed, thick as a fist. The radio, the hum of the motor, the faint buzz of the AC—all vanished at once, leaving only his own breathing loud in the tiny space.

His car rolled a few yards on momentum, then coasted to a stop.

"Okay," he whispered. "Okay, no. Nope. No, thank you."

His hands shook as he turned the key.

Nothing. Not even a click.

He tried again.

Still nothing.

"Come on," he begged. "Please, not tonight. I gotta get this deposit in, and I don't have money for a tow, and—"

The air in the car thickened.

It felt like stepping into a room where someone had been fighting: charged, sharp-edged, full of the echo of something unsaid, his ears ringing faintly.

He became aware, very suddenly, that he was not alone.

Not in the car. Not exactly.

It was more like...the road around him wasn't empty anymore. The woods on either side had leaned in close, crowding up against the Corolla, peering in the windows.

The urge to look over his shoulder hit so hard his muscles twitched.

"Don't," he whispered to himself. "Do not do that horror movie shit, Codey."

His breath fogged faintly in the air in front of him.

He blinked.

"It's August," he said aloud. "It's, like, eighty degrees."

His breath fogged again, pale and visible.

He hadn't noticed the temperature drop until the cold seeped into the car, wrapping around his ankles and crawling up under his pants.

The map light above his head flickered on by itself.

He flinched, a small yelp ripping out of him.

The light wasn't bright, just a soft, jaundiced glow that painted his knuckles bone-white against the steering wheel. It plunged the rest of the car into deeper shadow, making the backseat yawn behind him, dark and close.

"Okay," he said, his voice too loud in the tight space. "Nope. Nope. We're done. I'm calling—"

Who? He didn't have roadside assistance, nor any family to call, not really. His closest friend, Tasha from the register, lived in a different direction and had twice mentioned she didn't drive at night

due to messed-up headlights. He could call a tow truck and put it on a credit card he barely had space on. That would be the smart, normal-person move.

His phone screen stayed black when he tapped it.

He stared.

"Don't do this," he told it. "Please don't do this."

He held the power button down. Nothing.

A faint, thrumming sensation crawled over his skin, not like bugs, but more like static, or the feeling of standing under high-voltage lines, knowing something above could fry you.

"Okay," he whispered.

His heart pounded so hard it hurt.

He closed his eyes.

At eight, a foster mom had dragged him to a tiny cinder block church where the pastor shouted about demons and the power of prayer. He'd learned one thing in that hot, uncomfortable building: when people got scared enough, they talked to something, even if they weren't sure they believed in it.

"Uh," he said weakly. "If anybody's listening...maybe don't let me die in a chicken-logo polo on the side of the road?"

The air shifted.

It was like the whole night leaned closer.

Under his ribs, something answered: a low, slow pulse, not quite his heartbeat. It was like something very old rolling over in sleep.

The map light went out.

His breath seized in his chest.

Headlights washed across his windshield.

Codey flinched, throwing an arm up to shield his eyes as bright white light, harsh and sudden, cut through the dark. An engine rumbled, low and expensive-sounding.

Relief hit him so hard it almost hurt.

"Thank God," he blurted.

He blinked spots out of his vision and reached for the door handle.

The other vehicle stopped behind him, lights still on high. In the glare of his rearview mirror, he couldn't make out the make or model, just a dark, sleek shape, low to the ground.

A figure stepped into the beams.

For a moment, all he saw was an outline: tall, lean, draped in a long coat or perhaps a dramatically cut jacket. The figure moved with an unsettling ease, as if the dark were familiar ground.

Every deer-in-the-headlights, horror-movie instinct he had, screamed at once.

Do not get out. Do not.

The figure walked up to his driver's-side door and stopped, just outside the cone of his window's view.

Knuckles tapped lightly against the glass.

His throat closed.

He rolled the window down three inches, his thumb shaking on the switch. The night air that slid in was knife-cold, smelling of rain that hadn't fallen yet, and something metallic beneath it.

"You're a long way from town to be sitting in the dark," a voice said.

It was low and smooth, with a trace of an accent Codey couldn't place—not local, and not like anything he'd heard in real life, only in movies where people wore suits that cost more than his car and drank wine with unpronounceable names.

He swallowed.

"Car died," he managed. "Won't start."

The man—or at least, the voice sounded like a man's—made a small, thoughtful sound. "Unfortunate." A pause. "May I?"

"May you what?"

"See."

The word brushed along his nerves like fingers.

His stupid mouth said, "Sure," before his brain caught up.

The figure stepped closer, into the slice of light from his dash.

He was...beautiful. There wasn't really another word that fit.

Tall, yes, with broad shoulders and the kind of posture that suggested he was used to taking up space. His coat was long and dark, not quite black, with a weighty swing to it. Underneath, a charcoal shirt, open at the collar.

His face was all sharp lines and pale skin, high cheekbones and a jaw that could have been carved with a knife. His black hair was cut short at the sides and longer on top, pushed back from his forehead as if he'd run his fingers through it a dozen times.

His eyes—

Codey's brain hiccuped.

They looked dark at first. Then, as the man tilted his head, they caught the faint light from the dash and glowed. Not a normal reflection, not the way human eyes flashed red or green in photos; something deeper. Rich, old gold, like sunlight filtered through whiskey.

Fear knifed through Codey so suddenly he had to grip the steering wheel to keep from recoiling.

He knew, the way he knew when storms were coming and when lights were about to blow, that this man was not—could not be—normal.

"I..." he said, his brain having fallen out somewhere back on the highway.

The man smiled.

It wasn't a big smile, just a small curve of his mouth, as if some private joke amused him. It did nothing at all to make him less terrifying.

"Try the key again," the man said.

"I already—"

"Humor me."

Codey's hand obeyed before he decided to move. He turned the key.

The engine roared to life.

The headlights snapped back on, flooding the road ahead with light.

He gasped. "What the—"

"Electrical systems can be...temperamental out here," the man said. "Especially on nights like this."

"Nights like what?"

His gaze flicked toward the mountains. For a second, his expression shifted, something ancient and hungry stirring just beneath the surface.

"Waking nights," he said softly.

Codey's skin crawled.

His instinct screamed: roll the window up, hit the gas, and put as much distance as possible between himself and this beautiful nightmare of a stranger.

"Thank you," he said, because manners were a stupid, automatic reflex even now. "I, uh—I should get going. I've gotta—"

"Make the deposit."

Cold slid down his spine.

He hadn't said that part aloud.

"You're not exactly subtle," the man said lightly. "You've been thinking about that little bag under your leg since you left the restaurant."

Codey's gaze darted down, then back up. "Have you been—were you following me?"

"Yes."

The honesty hit harder than a lie would have.

"Why?"

The man's smile thinned. "Because you are not the only thing waking up tonight."

"I'm not—"

"You are," the man said, his voice gentler now. "If this road had been empty when your car died, something else would have reached you first. The wards are failing. The hills are restless. And you, Codey Hall, are humming loud enough to be heard for miles."

The world narrowed to the sound of his name in that voice.

No.

He had never seen this man in his life. He would remember; you didn't forget someone like this.

"How do you know my name?"

The man tilted his head again, studying him. "I have been watching these hills for a very long time," he said. "I know the blood that runs in them."

"You sound like my crazy uncle when he's drunk," Codey said, because the alternative was screaming.

The man laughed. The sound was soft and unexpectedly warm.

"I doubt that," he said.

"I'm not—" He shook his head, fingers slick on the wheel. "Look, I don't know what you want, but I'm not... There's nothing special about me, okay? I'm just a guy who smells like chicken and barely makes rent. So, thank you for jump-starting my car with your...weird vibes, I guess, but I'm not interested in whatever cult or pyramid scheme this is."

The man's smile faded. His gaze sharpened, all the softness draining out as if someone had flipped a switch.

"This is not a scheme," he said quietly. "This is a warning."

The air in the car thickened again. The radio hissed with faint static under the country song.

"Drive straight home," the man said. "Do not stop at the bank. Do not stop for gas or food, or to help anyone at the side of the road. Lock your doors. Do not open them for anyone unless you are certain they are...human."

Codey stared.

"Okay," he said slowly. "See, now you sound like a PSA from Hell."

"The wards are thinning," the man went on, as if he hadn't spoken. "Things will move that have not moved in decades. They will smell you. They will feel you the way lightning feels a lightning rod. You are not ready to meet them."

"You're talking like—like monsters are real or something."

The man's mouth curved into a smile devoid of kindness.

"Oh, Codey," he said softly. "You have no idea."

The thrumming under Codey's skin intensified. It felt like something under his ribs wanted to burst out, to claw through his chest and seize the night.

He pressed back against the seat, nails biting into his palms.

"What are you?" he whispered.

The man leaned down, resting one hand lightly on the edge of the open window. His fingers were long and pale, nails neatly kept. Codey saw, with horrible clarity, that there was no fog of breath in front of his mouth. The cold air didn't seem to touch him at all.

"Call me Lucian," he said. "It is not my first name, but it will do."

"That's not an answer."

Lucian's smile returned, slow and amused. "No."

"You tell me I'm humming like a lightning rod for monsters, you know my name, you just resurrected my car with a suggestion, and you're not going to answer what you are?"

Lucian considered that, head tipped.

"Very well," he said finally. "Tonight, I am your only real chance of not dying on this road. Does that help?"

"No," Codey said. "Not even a little."

Lucian's eyes gleamed.

In the distance, beyond the reach of the headlights, something howled.

It wasn't a coyote. He'd grown up around those sounds—thin, yipping, and almost pathetic. This was deeper, bigger. It rolled through the trees like a physical thing, shivering the leaves. The hairs on Codey's arms stood up; his whole body locked.

Lucian's head turned toward the sound. For a second, something wild flashed across his face, gone before Codey could read it.

"They are early," he murmured. "Interesting."

"Who's 'they'?" Codey demanded.

Lucian straightened. The hand on Codey's window tightened just enough for the metal to creak softly.

"Go home," he said. "Now."

"What about you?"

Lucian's smile turned sharp. "I am considerably harder to kill than you are."

Another howl rose, closer this time. It braided into the low hum under Codey's skin, setting his nerves on fire.

He didn't have a better plan. He didn't even have a worse one.

"Fine," he snapped. "But if I die, I'm haunting the shit out of you."

Lucian's laughter followed him as he rolled the window up. It sounded almost delighted.

Codey put the car in drive. His hands shook on the wheel. He hit the gas.

In the rearview mirror, he watched Lucian walk back toward his car. For a second, the headlights behind him caught the other man full-on, bleaching him white.

Lucian's shadow did not fall the way it should.

Then the road curved, and Codey lost sight of him.

He drove on, the radio hissing with static between songs, voices fuzzed on the edge of hearing. The humming under his skin worsened, as if he'd been tuned to a station he couldn't quite pick up.

He didn't stop at the bank. The night drop slot yawned as he drove past, a dark mouth in the brick. The deposit bag sat hot and heavy under his leg.

Finally, his trailer appeared, a low shape at the end of the gravel drive, its porch light burned out as always.

He pulled in, parked, and sat there for a second, engine ticking as it cooled.

The humming eased as soon as he crossed onto his tiny patch of rented land. It wasn't gone, but quieter, as if someone had simply turned the volume down.

He grabbed his backpack and the deposit, locked the car twice, and climbed the three uneven steps to his door.

His key stuck, then turned.

Inside, the air was stale and familiar—the little living room, the couch that sagged in the middle, the TV with one dead pixel in the corner, his thrift-store coffee table covered in coasters and library books.

He shut the door, threw the deadbolt, and leaned back against it, heart pounding.

"You're losing it," he told himself. "You've officially cracked."

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

He flinched so hard he almost dropped it.

The screen lit up without issue. "FULL BATTERY," the little icon cheerfully insisted. No missed calls. No messages.

Only fifteen minutes ago, it hadn't been working.

He unlocked it with shaking fingers and opened the camera app, pointing it at himself as if expecting to see something strange. But there were only the same tired brown eyes, the same mop of curls, the same KFC visor.

"Great," he said. "Still me."

The hum under his skin pulsed once, hard, like a heartbeat that wasn't his.

The lamp on the end table flickered.

He stared at it.

"Don't," he warned.

It blew out.

Glass popped, darkness rushed in, and something deep under the ground of Maynardville shifted, turning over to face him.

Far away, high on a ridge above town, the wards trembled.

The hills, for the first time in a very long time, opened their eyes.

And somewhere out on a dark backroad between Strawberry Plains and Maynardville, a vampire named Lucian smiled without showing his teeth and said, to no one at all, "Found you."